it’s a mitzvah!

One of the benefits of being a kid born into a family (anywhere north of absolute destitution) is that, for a few years, you’re entitled to take absolutely everything for granted. Christ, you’re just a kid. People still tie your shoes for you. People wipe your ass for you. You’ve always got a warm meal waiting for you, and for a while, you even get to suck it out of a breast. Being a kid fucking rules.

For a while, anyway. Once the process starts, innocence is often lost with the quickness. Sometimes, I guess, the supposed fairness of the universe unravels slowly for you, allowing enough time to soak in each disappointment and deal at your own pace. For the other 99 per cent of people, though, grace and trauma could not be further removed. Indeed, most of us end up stomping out a flaming bag of cosmic dog shit as a rite of passage. And, I mean, dog shit if you’re lucky – metaphorical dookie really knows no bounds.

Let me make note of the fact, however, that I am in no way suggesting that my experiences were any worse than anybody else’s. That’s certainly not the point of this. All told, I did have a mostly-happy childhood, with a few of the customary bumps along the way; the proximity of some of those bumps, however, made things seem a little more painful than they might have been otherwise. Because the thing about taking something for granted is that, once you lose it, it inevitably, immediately becomes infinitely more valuable.

What I’m getting at is, while it was going on, I couldn’t quite decide if the brief span of time while I was six years old in which (1) my parents got divorced and (2) I got chickenpox on the inside of my penis was evidence of a bizarre, vengeful God, or, rather, the lack of one altogether.

During my first few years, only a few things seemed like sure bets – one of which being that my parents were an inseparable unit, and another being that, when necessary, urine would come out of my dick. For a little over half a decade, I was proven right on both counts time and time again.

But my parents split up. Boohoo. It happens. At least I had my health (a freak occurrence of whooping cough notwithstanding – looking back, I may as well have contracted rubella or rickets). After a few moves and a month or so of no contact with my dad, my mom, my two younger brothers and I moved into a house deep in the heart of Toronto’s Jewish district.

And then, because nothing is ever as easy as a newly-divorced woman under 30 with little to no money moving her three young children into a new place by herself, my brothers and I got fucking chickenpox. Apparently, it came with the house.

But chickenpox is pretty standard. You get to look like a zombie for a couple weeks, slather yourself in delicious oatmeal, and discover the joys of scratching yourself. On paper, worse things could happen to you as a six-year-old.

Unless, of course, you manage to get a blister on the inside of your penis, blocking your urethral opening.

It’s innocuous at first. A silent killer, if you will – like carbon monoxide poisoning, but if carbon monoxide poisoning came in the form of skin that shuts off your fucking cock. Only you’re unaware of it until you have to pee. I’m not sure if you’ve ever had the childhood pleasure of watching your dick turn blue with swelling as it fills with urine that, as mighty a stream as it may be, cannot overcome the fleshy dam at the mouth of the river. If not, then let me assure you, if you’ve ever wondered about the chain of events that would need to occur in order for you to want to take an ice-pick to your urethra (for wholly non-sexual reasons), well …

(Correction: It’s worse than carbon monoxide poisoning.)

As a young boy, I can safely say it was the first time I’d ever had the unique experience of wanting to pass out, but simultaneously being kept from fainting because it felt like my genitals were about to burst into flames. It’s an acquired taste. Personally, I chose to deal with the situation by screaming and crying a whole fucking lot and running around with my pants down, thoroughly confused and not a little mortified by the proceedings.

Apparently, this is the sort of event that has the power to establish a dialogue between recent divorcees. Sensing that a trip to the hospital was of the utmost importance, my dad was called over to drive me there. Much to everyone’s delight, I somehow made out the word “hospital” in the midst of my less-than-heroic wailing, and decided that avoiding that particular trip was only a slightly higher priority than ever being able to urinate again. The scene that ensued involved me gripping our couch with everything I could muster while each of my parents grabbed hold of one of my legs and tried to pull me out the door, and me yelling like a crazy person the entire time.

(In retrospect, not one of my finer moments.)

Predictably, I conceded. Perhaps letting trained medical professionals handle this little situation would not be the end of the world. However, one of the concessions that come along with Canada’s socialized health care is that by the time your turn comes in the emergency room, you’ve either healed on your own or died. Luckily, I did not die of a ruptured penis that night – I did, however, sit in a sterile room with my pants down and my dad by my side for a good two hours before a doctor came in, shined a little flashlight … inside me, threw a tube of ointment at my dad, and told me I’d be fine. Sure enough, I was pissing like a champ later that night.

You hear people say things like, “That was the best piss ever” once in a while, but I cannot stress this enough: that was the best piss ever. I don’t care if you just woke up from a four-year coma or were holding it in during an orgy with Scarlett Johansson, Gia-era Angelina Jolie, and the 1940 German Olympic female gymnastics team (strictly for revenge purposes) – nothing will ever compare to the moment when the urinary roadblock was lifted and I could whiz like a bona fide human again.

My parents never did get back together, and there’s certainly no conclusive evidence to suggest that that evening’s episode did anything to re-open the lines of communication for purposes any larger than ensuring that their eldest son’s dick didn’t fall off. You take what you can get though, and as far as I’m concerned, if you come out of your first borderline-traumatic period with (1) both of your parents and (2) fully-functioning sex organs, you could be doing a lot worse.